As cute as they are, let’s preface this by saying babies are not on our agenda (yet). I mean, how can you travel the world and achieve world domination with a tiny little human counting on you to keep them alive. Impossible, right? Or so we thought, until we read the story of this teeny tiny traveller and her super parents…

This is Esmé, a beautiful blonde and bouncing 17-month-old baby girl from London. Together with her parents Karen and Shaun, she’s already visited a very impressive 9 countries in her short lifetime – Ireland, Singapore, Australia, Malaysia, Indonesia, New Zealand, Vietnam, Taiwan and Hong Kong. That’s one very well travelled little lady.

Unlike most new Mum’s who tend to nest away with their precious newborns, 31 year old Karen decided to do something entirely different – she decided to use that sweet maternity leave to go out and travel the world. Because really, who says a baby has to stand in your way?

So, aged just 3 months, that’s exactly what Karen, Shaun and Esmé did. They packed one backpack between them (which in itself is a miraculous thing – have you seen how much stuff babies have?!), jumped on a plane and started their travelling adventure.

Speaking to Mail Online, Karen says “Both Shaun and I were keen backpackers before I fell pregnant and everyone thought we were completely nuts when we said that we were going to take Esmé when she arrived. She was really well behaved and because she was small it was easy enough to keep her in the harness when we were on the move. We have no regrets, she got to experience new sights, scenes and smells as she grew and that is incredible.”

After 10-months of straight travelling, funded by Karen’s maternity leave pay and Shaun picking up intermittent landscaping work in New Zealand, the family are now back in London and already planning their next adventure to Thailand, Cambodia and New Zealand.

So the moral of the story? Just because you have a child, it doesn’t mean you have to stop living out your travel dreams. Sure they change the situation, but you just adapt and make it work.

“People say having a child ruins travelling, but it really doesn’t. Obviously there were times, like at night in the hotel room when you fancy a beer and the baby is asleep, and when you crack it open she wakes, that makes it harder. But it’s worth it. You can still do everything, including snorkelling and diving, but you just take it in turns. I can’t imagine having spent my maternity leave any other way”.